Thursday, January 20, 2011

Special to INS — Beginning next week, Walmart will offer funeral home services at 225 of its Supercenters. The Walmart slogan, “Save money. Live better,” will be altered at these locations to “Save money. Die stiffer.” Its motto “Always Low Prices” will be changed to “Eternally Low Prices.”

The locations of Walmart funeral outlets are scattered around the country, with concentrations in Florida and Arizona. Already, caravans of motor homes can be seen in Walmart parking lots to take advantage of Black-Light Specials featuring in-store packages starting at $500 for cremation at a municipal incinerator.

The Martha Stewart Infinity Series of services begins at $1,999 and ranges up to $14,999, depending on the options selected. These include facial reconstructions like YouthFace4You at $899, the Dolly Parton at $999, and the Private Presley at $1,999, among others. Clients can also be cryogenically preserved or have a life-size replica of themselves made at Madame Tussauds locations around the world, all at reduced prices.

Funeral sales desks will be found adjacent to the garden center area, where tie-in purchases of flowers and plants can be made. Viewing chapels will have a rotating altar with Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist themes. A Muslim theme might be added, depending on demand from the Mideast.

Scott Price, President and CEO, Walmart Asia, has negotiated with the Hongtai Casket Company of Nanjing, China to fabricate a line of jumbo caskets to accommodate its broad customer base. Price explained, “These will have ten lifting handles instead of the normal six, although it looks like ten will soon be the new normal in America. Of course they’ll be wider and have twin steel I-beams built into the bottom.”

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Special to INS — Eighty-seven-year-old Dummer Bergsteiger, a resident of La Sal, a tiny town in the mountains of southeast Utah, was surprised to find that “super bowl” referred to the football spectacular of that name: “I thought it meant that oversize toilet I saw in aisle 11 at The Home Depot. I been eyein’ that beauty ever since Gertrude dropped the hint about her up-and-comin’ birthday next week. It would frame her big butt just fine.”

It seems that Bergsteiger had only limited TV reception—Judge Judy on the hour and Sponge Bob on the half hour, with the exception of Sundays when the San Diego Curling League competition is broadcast continuously. Concerned that Bergsteiger might be too isolated from the world; parishioners at the Heilige Rolle Lutheran Church began a fund drive to buy a 40-foot antenna mast for him.

One effort to raise funds was nearly washed out by torrential rains: a paper-airplane distance contest. The winner, Fol Ding Lot, a second-year origami major at Moab Education Center, used waxed paper instead of copy paper to capture first-prize honors. The exchange student from Osaka, Japan credited his victory to experience: “I’m a fifth-generation origamist, so I guess I had a leg up on the competition.” After one month’s effort, the church community reached its goal of $400.

Asked if he was pleased with his enhanced TV reception, Bergsteiger replied, “Oh, it’s great. But I just don’t get that American Idol program. What’s with these people who can’t sing? And that Gretta van Susteren on Fox News--she looks like a manikin in Sears. I think I’ll stick with Sponge Bob and beach volleyball. That’s better than watching curling.”

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

As reported, Sarah Palin’s PAC had a number of candidates under crosshair images before the fall election. It is this type of irresponsible and inflammatory politicizing that can push some over the edge. Sure, it’s freedom of speech, but that rings hollow when seven people are gunned down. What cannot be denied is the link between inflammatory statements in general and the climate of anger that is running rampant in this country. Palin’s PAC website serves as a potent example.

Some claim that all segments of the political spectrum make inflammatory statements, but that is only partly true. The political Right has elevated it to an art form, which can be heard on talk radio and on Fox News daily. When travelling, I scan radio stations out of curiosity. The one major exception to inflammatory language is NPR, which can be left-leaning but there is no spewing of vitriol as is found on the Right. I don’t believe that anyone on the Left can hold a candle to the statements issued by a Palin, a Bachmann, or an Engle, which have been seen to spill over into their followers’ rally signs. And to equate Olbermann with Limbaugh, for example, is ridiculous. Olbermann can be both caustic and sarcastic, but Limbaugh is malicious to the core.

Some might read into this that I am in favor of censorship. But any “policing of words” should be undertaken by the politicos and their talking heads themselves by exercising self-restraint. There is nothing weak about a public discourse grounded in civility. But to use guns as a metaphor for political action can provide negative reinforcement to a troubled mind and is a total distortion of the Second Amendment.

I spent 4 years in the Marines. The assumption on the part of people I don’t know is that I am a Right-winger. Two examples: When I moved to Florida, a neighbor who saw the Marine decal on my car began sending me links to what were blatant, hateful lies about Democrats. Another time, while at the gun range, a fellow shooter looked at my Marine cap and said, “I bet you’d rather be shooting at a silhouette of Obama.” My responses were sharp, but given their assumptions, were justified.

I think about anger in America and try to explore its roots, and at the end of the day, it all comes down to personal economics—the alienation of the 17% who are unemployed or have given up looking. They provide the tinder for angry public discourse. The gap between the common good and the corporate conscience grows wider each day. In other words, corporate profits trump “what is good for America.” Many major U.S. corporations now have workforces dominated by foreigners. Whose interests do they serve? And as we have seen, Wall Street churns money for the benefit of the few and the despair of many.

A corporate oligarchy now rules America and has no interest in bettering the plight of the disappearing line worker or the small business owner. I suspect that the new Tea Party members in Congress will be gobbled up by the system and will have only a marginal impact on the juggernaut of special interests that, in actuality, run this country and, incidentally, are running it into the ground.

Government and business should be addressing a number of major issues in this country, e.g.: (1) infrastructure, e.g., roads and bridges, railroads, the electrical grid; (2) structural unemployment, i.e., retraining of the workforce to replace jobs that are never coming back; (3) basics in education (including much-diminished humanities curricula); (4) and admit that democracy isn’t for everyone and let foreign belligerents fight their own battles (and in tandem, reduce military expenditures substantially). I see only token progress, if at all, on any of these issues. Good luck, America.

Monday, January 3, 2011

Special to INS — Premier Wen Jiabao of China, in a nationally televised address, called on his countrymen to consume less oxygen: “We are facing a critical point in the Peoples’ Revolution,” said Jiabao. “For us to continue on the shining path toward world domination, we must rein in the consumption of this vital resource. Our smelting plants have seen their efficiency decline by 15 percent because of a corresponding drop in atmospheric oxygen, which now stands at 18 percent, not the normal 21 percent.”

To restore atmospheric oxygen to its pre-revolutionary level, several major reforms will be put in place. Ordinary citizens will be allowed ten breaths per minute, instead of the normal fifteen. Exceptions will be made for athletes, speakers at political rallies, and those engaged in sexual activity. Cigarette consumption will be reduced to four packs per day per person, down from the normal six. Nicotine content in the popular brand, Zhong Nan Hai, will be doubled to calm frazzled nerves as a result of reduced puffing.

China’s EPA chief, Chou Em Doun, claims that the problem began during the Ming Dynasty, when the Great Wall was completed: “The wall much too high and brocks flesh air from Manchuria and Siberia. It should be air-rifted to Beijing and turned into theme park.” When the interviewer raised the possibility that China’s huge number of coal-burning power plants might be using up the oxygen, Doun replied, “You been on the pipe too much getting high. Here, have a Hai instead.”

In a related development, McKinsey, the global consulting firm, revealed that China’s move to install giant wind farms for “green” electricity is a ruse. They are in reality fan farms whose purpose is to pull down fresh air from the north.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Special to INS — Anarchist Liam Breton of Tampa announced that he has settled on a date to foment rebellion in the lower 48 states. Alaska and Hawaii are not to be included because he only has 8,200 points in his frequent-flyer program. Breton’s inspiration for the rebellion came from his uncanny resemblance to Владимир Ленин (Vladimir Lenin).

In an interview with Wolf Blitzer, Breton said, “I figure April 3 would be good, because that’s the date that Lenin arrived at the Finland Station in Petrograd in 1917. If I take an Amtrak train from Tampa on April second, I’ll be in Penn Station by 7:32 in the evening on the third, just in time to catch an off-Broadway show. Stomp might be good—get me in the mood, you know. I’ve already lined up the Altones, a quartet from my community, Snobis Birdis Terra, to sing the Marseille when I step off the train.”

When pressed by Blitzer to reveal the purpose of the revolution, Breton pulled out a 300-page manifesto, along with his sub-prime mortgage, that he will have copied and laid at the doorways of Goldman Sachs, the stock exchanges, and other financial centers in New York. “If I’m lucky, one of those Wall Street thieves will trip over the damn pile.”

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, at a hastily called news conference in Washington, said that she was aware of the Breton threat: “Breton’s been under surveillance ever since he refused to bend over during a cavity check at Tampa Airport last month, despite the fact that we’ve installed smiley-face tiles in the inspection area. Plus, the TSA gal offered to check his prostate while in there as part of a special offer I put in place recently.”